Credit Card Authorisation email hoax scam
18th October 2003

This email hoax has been in distribution from 18th October 2003 and we have an image of the email. This is just an image of the original, so there is absolutely no code included and none of the links or buttons will now work. The image shown has been reduced to 80% of the original size

The email hoax ...

The email suggests that your credit card has been suspended for 10 days due to some sort of global technical failure and requests that you provide your credit card account information using the form provided within that email. The email goes on to suggest that authorizations.net is a leading global payment processing service and is written in the worst English we've seen in a while.

The URL contained within the form code leads to a CGI script located www.authorizations.net which is hosted by hostsave.com (which appears to be a reseller hosting account held with Affinity Internet) - and not a likely candidate for any online payment processing service. You would at least

expect to see a web site (with a secure sign in) at authorizations.net, but there is nothing, not even an error page to be found (apart from the cgi form script mentioned of-course). While it may be a poor quality email scam, it should be observed and realised how easy it is to create these scams and how easy it can be to fall for it.

This is an example of how Identity Theft occurs through 'phishing' (a term used for this kind of theft of critical information, such as credit/debit card, bank, social security number and site user name and password)...